The Muggle and the Mage
by GBlackwell
Summary: The existence of the Wizarding World has been revealed to Muggles everywhere, causing tensions to rise and the opposing sides to snarl at each other and ready their their weapons. As the tensions rise, a reporter enters a restaurant, soon to be the first one ever to officially publish an interview with a real witch. Warning: OC.


**Wow... never expected to see myself writing Harry Potter fanfic. This is... way out of character for me.**

**Warnings: use of an OC, one random shout out to another series, possible inaccuracies with canon due to the author not doing any bloody research and not having every fact of Harry Potter memorized.**

**Disclaimer: Anyway, do not own.**

* * *

**The Muggle and the Mage**

* * *

It had been many years since the Great Reveal; many were still questioning whether or not it was a good thing for so-called "Muggles" to find out about the existence of magical people. And what a long set of years it was.

There had been panic at first, followed by a hasty attempt by the wizards to cover up, only to fail due to the spectacular amount of people who had learned the secret, its forced acknowledgment by governments worldwide, and the countermeasures these governments had taken to prevent any mindwiping of their citizens. After threats of all-out war and a lot of posturing on both sides, things had finally settled down into diplomatic measures, all of which of course maintained a certain amount of contempt and viciousness. The various religious groups claiming the Wizards were Satanic worshippers certainly hadn't helped. And then there was scandal following scandal, lawsuit after lawsuit about which side retained custody of what kind of children in whatever circumstances, and how many bloodlines had to be traced to declare a child legally a wizard, etc., etc.,

At any rate, through all of this mess, it never seemed to the woman entering the café—as she mentally reviewed all these incidents since "The Great Reveal"—that there'd ever be something a simple or normal as a reporter going over to do a piece on what life in the so called "Wizarding World" was like.

The woman frowned, looking around and reaching in her coat, lightly touching the gun she had concealed in there. She wondered if this wizard she was supposed to interview would be able to see it. She wondered if a wizard would even care.

A friend of her had once said, "Probably what will happen is they'll stay to their side of things, and we'll stay to our side of things, and besides a few scandals here and there we'll figure a way to sneer at each other without a serious war." She also remember him adding, "Though we could totally take those dress-wearing pansies" as an afterthought.

She asked at the front of the café. "I'm looking for a… Weasly?" she asked, "Has anyone with that name come in?"

Apparently, no one of that name had come in. She took a deep breath, and tried to relax all the muscles on her face. Why had she taken this job, she wondered to herself? She remembered her editor telling her that she would probably be the best for this story because of her "background" with Wizards.

What a joke.

Still, she couldn't complain. After all, she had taken the job. If she was going to damn anything, it would have to be her own morbid curiosity. She _did _want to know how these people lived, and she _did _want to give a fair assessment of their culture, despite her self-consciously biased nature towards the whole thing. She knew, intellectually at least, that they all had to be _people, _which meant that not all of them were bad.

She was expecting someone different of "Weasly," but when the Wizard came she still held out her hand with a polite smile on her face.

"Hello," she said, in the voice she normally used for interviews. "My name is Paula Ginger."

"Pleased to meet you," said the other woman who was neither robed in dark garments nor glowing with a mystical aura. "You can call me Hermione, if you like."

"That's alright, Mrs. Weasly," she said. To herself, she thought that of course the magical person would have such an elaborate name.

Weasly seemed a bit disappointed by this, but didn't object. "Well come over here," the woman said, "There's a lovely area right this way. It's my favorite spot, though if you'd like to sit somewhere else…"

"Wherever you pick if fine, ma'am."

The table was right next to the window, which irritated Paula. It was the exact time of day where the sun was positioned just right to shine uncomfortably bright through the window. She couldn't help but think about all the damage it could be doing to her skin.

"May I ask why you chose this location?" She asked the wizard—or witch, she mentally corrected herself.

"Well," Weasly said, "I thought you'd feel more comfortable if we were at a Muggle area. And I love this café, at any rate. I used to come here with… my parents."

She nodded, and took this down. "So… what makes you think this place is safe? Its rather open, and I can't think it would be a good thing for someone to overhear us."

"Don't worry, I've actually already cast a spell to make sure that no one will overhear."

Paula's hand froze for just a second (when the hell did she cast a spell? Could she do it just by thinking? No, she must at least have a wand, she knew that much, but didn't spells have to be spoken, too?) but then she calmly wrote that down.

"Writing already?" Weasly asked, raising her eyebrows.

She gave an obligatory smile. "Well, you never know what kind of details will be just all right in the article. So, Wizards tend to frequent normal restaurants, shops, and cafés?"

The other woman frowned. "You mean _Muggle _restaurants and so forth. It's a bit unfair to call non-wizards normal. That makes it sound like there's something wrong with people like me, don't you think?"

Paula felt the impulse to roll her eyes (_Sure, you all have magical powers and yet you complain about being labelled by a little word_), but instead she just took this down, while she shot back, "It's also a bit unfair that the 'correct' term, as you seem to think 'Muggle' is for people like _me, _is a label that Wizards invented, don't you think?"

For a moment she thought she'd been too harsh, or that she had soured any possibility of having a completely civil conversation after a reply like that. She wondered if there was any resentment seeping through her voice. She wouldn't be surprised if there was.

But Weasly didn't seem to notice, but only laughed, a little awkwardly. "Well, I suppose you have a point there," she said.

The laugh caught Paula off guard.

"But anyway, I don't know about most wizards and where they hang out," Weasly said, "My parents were Mug—I mean, non-wizards. That's why I am accustomed to places like this."

Paula nodded. Weasly was smiling brightly, eyes shining with a kind of nostalgia. She took in the honesty of that expression, and felt little bit of her warming up to the witch.

The conversation after that got easier, and Paula found herself taking fewer and fewer notes. She had a lot of questions about the technicalities of everything at first, but after a while she got used to just hearing, "Well, we have a magic spell for that…"

The magical part of it was what she was expecting, though. A lot of other things in the conversation just simply didn't make sense.

"So, you only have one magic school in all of England?" she asked.

"Well, yes…"

That was odd. One school for the population of an entire country? Paula mused, "So, I take it that this means that the Wizard population is much, much lower than the population of… non-wizards."

Weasly nodded.

"Why is that?"

"To be honest… I don't know," The brunette said.

Paula furrowed her eyebrows. "Well, doesn't your government conduct studies on these kinds of things? Polls, collecting trends…?"

"Not that I know of."

The oddly diminished population of the Wizarding World wasn't the only thing that surprised her.

"A giant three-headed-dog? In a school?"

"Yes," Weasly laughed, "That was back when.

Paula cut her off. "Why was there such a dangerous animal sharing the same building as a young children?"

And that's when the tale started. And what a tale it was. Perhaps if it had been a children's fairy tale, she would have enjoyed it more. Listening to it as this witch fondly reminisced, she found herself thinking of it as one. Whenever she started to think of it as something that actually happened, she had more questions.

"They hid a powerful substance in a _children's school? _One that they knew this Dark Lord would come after?_"_

Weasly smiled at her. "Well, when you put it that way, it does sounds rather… risky. But there was no other way, Nicholas Flamel said that the stone must be in Dumbledore's keeping. It was much safer than keeping it at Gringott's."

"Sure," Paula said, "So safe that three ten-year-olds could get past its defenses." Then, realizing how that had sounded, she said, "I'm sorry… I just think that any sensible adult would realize that putting such a thing at a school would be endangering the students. If this Dumbledore was the only one who could protect it, then he should have resigned and gone to a remote location."

She was surprised that Weasly still had patience with her after this, but it seemed the witch had patience to spare, and just laughed it off. After that, she continued her story, and question followed question: "Why couldn't your friend just resign from this Triwizard Tournament?" "Why would they design such a dangerous event for children?" "If this Voldemort already had a man posing as a teacher at the school, then why did he bother to set up this huge tournament to kidnap your friend instead of just getting this man to kidnap him?" "Why would they allow students to have wands when it allows them to cast such dangerous spells?"

Mostly, they were met with half an explanation, a shrug, or a laugh. Paula would laugh with her while secretly thinking that the entire Wizarding World must be mad.

"So… this Second Wizarding War, as you call it," Paula asked, "Consisted of exactly one battle, at this same school?"

"Well… there was a lot more going on behind the scenes, but that was the only battle."

"That's… not what most of us non-wizards would consider a war," Paula said, "I would hardly call that a battle. Not that much loss of life."

It was only at this that she was the witch lose the friendly demeanor, just for a second. (Why? She had only stated the truth). The witch's eyes flashed, and Paula stealthily reached for the gun hidden on her, before berating herself for being so jumpy. It was unlikely that the witch would kill her over this.

At any rate, after a few tense seconds she saw the wrath replaced by tiredness. "No loss of life is 'not that much,' Ms. Ginger," Weasly said. And then, a bit more bitingly, "And I don't think that it's anything to be proud of. The fact that your people kill more people in wars than we do."

Paula was stunned for a moment, and then she laughed. The laugh surprised even herself. "Well," she said, "I… can't argue with that."

* * *

In hindsight, she decided that the review was botched. She had let her personal biases get through, allowing her tone to get snide one times too many. She couldn't believe she had let herself slip like that.

Nevertheless, the article was a success. It was a smash hit, in fact, and that issue of their paper completely sold out. Everyone wanted to know about the wizards, everyone wanted to find out about these people on a level that all of those nasty diplomatic reports didn't allow.

"Excellent work," Ginger, her editor said. "You should do more of this."

She doubted that. She had most likely alienated her one contact from that world, the one person willing to open up. "Perhaps, sir," she said aloud, "But it would depend of Mrs. Weasly."

"What, can't you get someone from your family to give us some insight?"

"No. It's… very complicated, sir."

She spent that night re-reading all of the major events connected to the Great Reveal. In particular, she found herself watching and replaying that single, brief statement in the audio interview from the normal man who had managed—against all possibility—to prove the existence of wizards to the world.

"_Mr. Lawliet… why exactly did you decide to go to such lengths to prove this? What did you have to gain?"_

"_Hm? Gain? Well… not really anything. I suppose part of me was just thinking that people deserve to know the truth, however strange it may be. But more importantly, I just thought it would be an interesting challenge. And it was."_

She clicked off the recording, and sighed. "What a mess," she said to herself.

* * *

She didn't expect to hear that Weasly had offered to share more information to the press (all approved by her 'Ministry' of course). She expected even less to hear the Mrs. Weasly to ask specifically for her.

What she was expecting even less was for the next interview to devolve into a friendly conversation in spite of Paula's own best efforts to remain impersonal. The woman had talked about _The Lord of the Rings, _damn it, and she just couldn't help getting sidetracked on the subject of her favorite childhood books. And then they had to talk about how the reveal of actual wizards would affect fantasy literature in the publishing industry… and then they got talking about Star Wars…

She wasn't expecting for Mrs. Weasly to offer to give her a tour of some magical sights (as far as could be managed by a Muggle) She wasn't expecting to bring her home to meet her family. She wasn't expecting to find all of her kids and her husband unbearably charming, to find herself being reminded of all those family connections of hers that had died off so long ago…

She definitely wasn't expecting to end up calling Mrs. Weasly, 'Hermione' especially not after just four visits.

It didn't matter… she still kept her gun with her in all of those visits, always carefully concealed. Some paranoias just didn't die.

* * *

Her articles about the Wizarding World were famous. Not only did they sell well, but many were praising them for their "hopeful, postitive tone" and for, "humanizing wizards to many skeptics and anti-wizards out there." They were called a giant step toward dissolving the tensions between the two, though other dismissed them as outright propaganda.

"When you read Ms. Ginger's articles," She remembered hearing on a particular newstation, "It's as though the divide between us and them doesn't exist. Hopefully, this can lead to both sides coming to respect each other, and even integrating in the future."

Paula sighed. She looked at all of the cases of people being found dead from no causes (_Avada Kedavra_ she thought to herself) and anti-wizard hate propaganda, and she just laughed. Hopeful? Her? With this huge mess? She didn't think so.

At any rate, it was more Hermione's project than hers. Hermione was the one with the ideas, the one thought it all up. On the Wizarding side, she was working even harder as a political figure to reduce anti-Muggle prejudice. Paula just had to play along and start ideas going on the non-wizard side.

She thought of the Anti-Obliviation Treaty, just a few years ago, one of the results of the Great Reveal. It had ruled that wizards and the wizard government had no right to obliviate non-wizards, and so must return their memories. It had been possible, and the wizards had been scarily efficient about owning up to who had been obliviated… apparently they kept some kind of records. (The only reason the wizards had agreed to this was because of one wizard celebrity's support of the act. Pot… something? Potter? No, that wasn't a wizard name at all).

The important thing was that if it hadn't been for that act… she would never have remembered…

She's glad, she decides. Ultimately, all memories were a part of who one was. If one lost even the worst ones… they were denied part of who they were.

* * *

Hermione ends up seeing the gun on her one day. It was only a matter of time, Paula realized, before it would happen, and she cursed herself silently for bringing them at all. Her heart pounded in her chest at the wand her friend was point at her, right outside her house. Such a tiny thing, but capable of so much destruction.

She was just glad that Hermione had told her husband to "leave it to her." Otherwise, there'd be two of them pointed at her.

"Paula… you brought a gun? To my house…" Hermione said. "What are you…?

"No, it's not like that!" she said. She nearly shouted, "I wasn't planning to kill you" but she realized how ridiculously guilty that would make her sound, so she said more calmly. "The truth is… I always carry them. I'm… I'm a little paranoid."

Hermione frowned. "You think that excuses it?" she said, "What if they fired off on accident? _My children are here!"_

Paula almost said she was sorry. Perhaps she should have. Instead, what came out was: "And that wand is any better?" She found her voice surprisingly low and threatening, "You think I was going to walk into a place with someone who could point a stick at me and kill me with two words?!"

Hermione was taken aback. "What made you think I would do that? I had no reason…"

"You wouldn't need a reason!" Paula shouted, "It would be like killing an insect, to a wizard! It would be just a sick bit of fun. Let's go kill some _Muggles, _why don't we. It's not like we'll ever get caught, we'll just zap them and vanish!"

But Hermione wasn't backing down. "Paula, guns can _only _kill people. Wands are necessary for a wizard, they can do much more…"

"Oh yes, let's not forget about more!" she interrupted. She was completely losing it now, shaking all over, "Wands can do more than kill a Muggle! Just one point, one little _Crucio _and… and…"

She began hyperventilating. _Damn it, no. _She couldn't do this, not here… it was undignified, it was pathetic… she had to… get a hold of herself.

She felt Hermione's hands on her. The witch had put her wand away, and was now looking her in the eyes. Not with forgiveness, but with an intellectual suspicion.

"Paula," she said, "How do you know that spell?"

Paula slowly got in control of her breath. She looked into Hermione's eyes, and she found her own tearing up. But she blinked them back, and clamped her jaw shut.

"Muggles don't know those spells," Hermione said, "Only wizards. So how did you learn them?"

She gulped. "We _muggles," _she hissed, "Are a lot more knowledgeable than you think."

"That's a little vague," Hermione said, "I know it's not common knowledge among… non-wizards. I want to know exactly how you learned it."

"Or wh-what?" Paula asked, cursing herself for sounding so shaken. Hermione gripped her shoulders.

"What do you think?" she asked, "Do you think that I would hurt you to get it out of you? Do you r_eally _think I'm that kind of person?"

The silence that ensued was a bit too revealing.

"Well, I'm not that kind of person," Hermione said, "I don't know what you're experiences with other wizards were in the past… but I'm not going to hurt you. But I'm also not going to allow you to bring a gun to my house."

Paula sighed. "Fine…" she mumbled.

She sat down on the nearest thing that offered itself up as a chair. She was exhausted. Really, this physical intimidation wasn't really her thing.

"Honestly, if you hate and distrusts wizards so much, why did you even agree to interview me in the first place?"

She shrugged weakly. "Well, intellectually I always thought that as long as people are people, then any group has to have some good in it."

"You're probably right about that," Hermione said. "So… are you going to tell me exactly how you know that spell?"

Paula sighed.

"What about other spells? Which ones do you know?"

"Just Avada Kedavra and Crucio," she said. "There was another one I saw… but I forgot the name." Because she had only seen the third one once, while the other two had been used… quite enough to memorize.

"So you know them from experience."

She didn't answer, but just focused on her breath, which was calming down quite a bit. She was starting to feel a bit better… though with a sick feeling in her stomach, the kind that resulted from guilt or other such emotion and stayed with her for days afterwards.

"I'm sorry," Hermione said.

"Don't be," Paula said, "I understand. I was a fool to bring a stupid gun."

"That's not what I meant, you know."

Paula shrugged. "It's not like you've done anything else."

* * *

Hermione tells her about her parents one day.

"During the Second Wizarding War… I erased their memories. I erased all of their memories of me, and influenced them to go move to Australia, where I was sure that Voldemort wouldn't find them. It seemed to be the right thing at the time. I was a target, and it would be easy for a wizard to attack them. This way, they didn't have to feel any worry or guilt about me running off to fight a war."

"They had always been great parents. Loving… supportive, despite the fact that they didn't know anything about magic, they never shunned me for the fact that I was a witch… unlike some people I've heard of. I really loved them, and I know they loved me. But... when I returned their memories after the war, they went ballistic."

"They were angry that you had just toyed with their minds without their consent," Paula said.

Hermione winced. "It honestly didn't seem that way to me at the time. But… they were betrayed, hurt, and livid. They said that I had no right to simply take away so much of their lives on a whim. That I had no right to decide whether it was 'safe' for them to have memories that were a part of who they were."

"I tried to explain it was for the best, but my dad just shouted, 'Why didn't you at least explain to us what was going on? If you had told us to move to Australia for a while, we would have!' I honestly… hadn't. I hadn't even _tried _to explain, hadn't even tried to reason with them. I had just… assumed. Mom said that having magic had warped my mind, made me think I could make decisions for other people simply because I had power they didn't. I… couldn't say anything to that."

"So then what?"

"They haven't spoken to me since. I don't think they'll ever forgive me."

"You know… you didn't have to tell me this."

Hermione looked at her. "No, but I wanted to. I just want you to know… I've made mistakes. And I've learned… painfully, exactly how non-wizards view some of the things we've done."

* * *

It was the last touch to the article, the final quote. Paula liked to make the last lines snappy and memorable, but was surprised at how easily it flowed this time.

_It's not going to be easy. What we have here is a gap just as dangerous, if not more so, than many of the ethnic or religious conflicts that have killed so many in the past. But we can move forward. We can overcome our differences, and learn to disregard the superficial things that tie us down. We who are not wizards are not children to have our fates decides by those with magic, but neither are wizards demons who would enslave us all._

_In time, perhaps, we can acknowledge our mistakes and realize our potential. In time, perhaps, we can have peace._

-Paula Ginger_._

* * *

**I dislike the whole, "Oh yeah, wizards have a right to obliviate Muggles at all times to keep their secret, because Muggles couldn't possibly handle the truth!" aspect of Harry Potter. Can you tell? I don't hate Harry Potter, but this in particular (with a few other nitpicks) kind of prevented it from becoming one of my favorite series. But hey, it's still pretty solid, so I'm not insulting anyone for liking it.**

**Thank you for reading!**


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